Building for Life Campaign Marketing

Client

The Building for Life Campaign

What We Did

The Building for Life campaign chose dRAE Media & Marketing in order to increase the number of donations they were receiving for their year-end giving campaign. We worked with the organization to develop a complete digital and social strategy for their donation program. This plan included targeted Facebook advertising, direct mail campaigns, IP targeting of likely donors, as well as Facebook posts which were boosted to targeted users. We worked worked alongside the key decision-makers within the campaign to create a social content calendar and targeted audiences that took into account the key demographics of their most likely donors. This digital and social campaign took place from December 8th to December 31st.

Facebook Advertising

As a part of our social and digital marketing plan, we did extensive research into the potential donors who were most likely to give to this campaign. We found key demographic information about these individuals including their Facebook interests, age, household makeup, and other key facts. This allowed us to target our Facebook advertising to the people that would be most interested, giving us a lower Cost per Click and a higher engagement rate. Over the course of this campaign, we had an average Cost per Click of just $0.47 for all of our Facebook advertisements. Our campaign specific Facebook advertisements had a total engagement of 931 people, with a reach of 25,304 people.

Boosted Facebook Posts

Along with our targeted Facebook advertisements, we also used our audiences to Boost campaign-specific posts. This gave us the chance to retarget many of our audience members and expand our reach to new potential donors. We used a detailed social calendar to plan out Facebook posts to maximize their organic reach and engagement rates, allowing us to more effectively use our money on reaching new potential donors. This was extremely important as we didn’t want to waste advertising dollars on Boosting posts that weren’t set up to be organically successful. Many people believe that just Boosting a post is enough, but if you aren’t creating engaging content and posting it at the correct times during the day, then you are wasting advertising dollars.

Over the course of our campaigns, we were able to reach 2,700 people to engage with them and ask that they donate to this year-end giving campaign. Our Boosted posts had a total reach of 24,081 people and this campaign had an average Cost per Click of just $0.22. We saw a high rate of meaningful engagements from this campaign, including Shares and Facebook comments. Many of our Boosted posts had close to 50% of their views and engagements coming strictly from organic means, showing that our decisions regarding social strategy and targeted advertising were highly successful.

IP Targeting

We chose to spend part of our advertising dollars for this campaign on IP targeting. This allowed us to target specific users and show them advertisements based strictly on their location, which was typically their home. By showing advertisements based off of address, we were able to serve a higher frequency of advertisements to people who were the most likely to give to the campaign. We found that this method worked very well when paired with our other efforts, and it allowed us to ensure that our advertising dollars were being effectively spent. By showing advertisements based on home addresses, we also guaranteed that the people that we wanted to view the ad would be shown the donation call to action.

Donation Results

When we cross referenced the list of donors for this campaign, we found that the combined efforts of our IP targeting, Facebook advertising and direct mail efforts led to 78 donations. This was just under 32% of the total donations that we saw during this campaign. The other 167 donations came about through a combination of targeted Facebook advertising, Boosted posts, and direct mail marketing. For the portion of the budget that was allocated towards IP targeting, we saw a very high rate of efficiency. The combination of the two “audience targeted” portions of this campaign brought about a higher rate of donations that we expected and we were very pleased with these results. We know that, in addition to the campaign donations, we brought in a total of 931 website views for the Building for Life campaign site. We also know that 440 of these website views came directly from the Boosted Facebook posts that we used to target our key audience.

Impact Summary

The combined efforts of targeted Facebook audiences, IP-based targeting, and strategic Facebook posting saw a higher rate of donations than we initially expected. We obviously had the correct eyes on our key message and were able to capitalize on both initial targeting and follow-up retargeting efforts to key audience members. The use of IP targeting allowed us to specify which individuals would see advertisements based on their home address, giving us an additional edge in increasing the frequency and dollar amount for donations during this campaign.

By serving compelling posts and meaningful advertisements on Facebook, we found that we could increase the organic engagement rate and lower the Cost per Click once advertising dollars were put behind the campaign. Without the strategic care that was put into creating Facebook content that people wanted to engage with, we would have been forced to spend a much higher percentage of our marketing budget on Facebook advertising. This effective use of our marketing funds gave us more opportunities to serve our ads to people that would engage with them.

Through our use of audience-focused advertising, we were able to get and maintain stellar results for our client. Their year-end giving campaign was a major success and we were ecstatic to be able to bring in the results that we did. We felt confident not only with the number of donations that were brought into the campaign, but also with the effectiveness of each of our marketing dollars. No part of our budget was wasted during this giving campaign, and we are always proud when we can say that.